In order to cope, some adult children try to dictate what their elderly parents do each day – their medical care, what they eat, where they go and how they get there.

“I’ll take the keys from my parents. I’ll call Con Edison and have their gas turned off. But a lot of people don’t have the strength to look their parent in the eye and put their foot down,” one man said.

As people live longer, more and more adult children find themselves putting their foot down and hovering.

Some older parents don’t mind.

“I translate it as they’re concerned,” said one man.

“It’s been a little pushy at times, but I’ve found that the input has been very helpful, and their caring makes me feel safe,” a woman agreed.

Some elderly people say even if they are not able to do what they once did, they don’t appreciate being treated like children.

“Right now, I’m not getting any respect. That’s a fact,” one woman said.

People Finch spoke with said there’s a very fine line between caring for your aging parent and trying to control them.

“There’s kind ways to do it, like when she tells you at 92 I think I can still drive, we’re like OK mom we’ll see,” said Doris Neugebauer. “And you find little steps you can take to make it more accepting for her.”

Dr. Gisele Wolf-Klein, director of geriatric education at Northwell Health, says the amount of control an adult child should have over their elderly parent’s life comes down to one thing: cognitive ability.

“If they are cognitively intact, whatever it is that they want to do, they should be doing,” she said. “We owe the elderly respect and dignity and decision making until the very end.”

Wolf-Klein also said as long as an elderly parent is thinking clearly, he or she should always be allowed to participate in their own care and offer their opinion on how to resolve issues, even if they’re forgetful or accident-prone.

My dad is 86 and drives MUCH better then many millennial’s who can’t get their faces out of their phones while “driving”. Granted, they may not have quite the reaction time to get out the way of a distracted millennial swerving into their lane, but they’re not all incapable. Possibly having a yearly or biannual driving test and vision test might be helpful.

The other side of the issue is becoming a home health care worker and being there for a parent everyday. I learned a very important lesson early on, its not about what I want, its about what my parent wants to do, can do, and can safely do that comes first. I’m just along to give back to a parent or parents that did so much for me.

Home HealthCare can actually reduce Medicare hospital costs more than the amount the Home Health care worker is being paid. It’s the one program that Republicans should be backing as it would be an instant job creator while actually cutting Medicare costs by an even greater amount.

But that isn’t the issue. The issue is individual rights. Parents do not relinquish their rights simply by being aged, and their kids can be as much a pain-in-the-posterior as they want, but they do not have the legitimate power to impose their will absent the parent being declared mentally incompetent by a court.

I’m not elderly but rather middle-aged. And already I’ve noticed that my two millennial kids are way too comfortable telling me how to live my life than I ever was with either of my parents – even when they were old and one in cognitive decline.

If parents think their middle-aged kids today are controlling, wait until we see how the know-it-all millennials treat their parents in about 15-20 years.